Monthly Archives: March 2012

This edgy, raw documentary explores the politics of disability through the performances, debates and late-night conversations of activists at a national conference on Disability & the Arts. Including interviews with well known disability rights advocates such as Cheryl Marie Wade, Mary Duffy and Harlan Hahn, Vital Signs conveys the intensity, variety and vitality of disability culture today. Open-Captioned. Contains strong language and nudity.

Documentary Reviews:

“Long on humor and leavened with performance art, poetry and anecdote, Vital Signs may be raw, but the content is fresh, fully developed and anything but primitive.” Barry Corbet, New Mobility Magazine

Our February 2nd, 2012 event Beyond Rescue: Critical Approaches to Human Trafficking in Asian and Migrant Communities was an incisive investigation into the complexities of the human trafficking framework.

For those who were unable to attend, here are a few of the points of discussion.

Panelists put human trafficking into the larger context of global movements of people through immigration and emigration. There are many push factors, which include the conflicts and wars in which US militarization has played a key part. Family reunification is also often a key factor. Emigration for economic reasons is another factor in global movement, and these economic factors are also closely connected to the conflicts in which the US military is implicated. The structural economic inequalities inherent in international trade agreements, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), also cause some of the push and pull factors.

Panelists also deconstructed the stereotypes of human trafficking involving young women in the sex industry. Human trafficking in fact does not have a typical ‘face.’ It crosses different industries involving agricultural workers, food industry workers and domestic workers. It also crosses genders, nationalities and age groups.

The discussion around human trafficking also often assumes an Asian ‘victim.’ Panelists discussed significant historical traits in the continuation of this trope. The history of US military engagement in the Asia Pacific in which comfort women served the sexual ‘needs’ of US troops still color the discussion today. Orientalist stereotypes, with Asian women associated with a forbidden sexuality, also inform the trope. Patterns of immigration history and legislation also come to bear on today’s narratives. The US barred the entrance of women from particular Asian countries in the 1800s and 1900s, and human trafficking stereotypes are bolstered by these old fears of Asian women coming into the country.